Woodsmoke and Salsa

I stood at the top of a cliff today - overlooking one of the oldest golf courses in the world, staring out over the most beautiful slate grey, white flecked, vanishing darkness that is our ocean. Orange streetlamps lit up the hotels that meander their way along the edge of the sea and the Autumn leaves lay in a sodden carpet along the pathway. Winter is in the breeze and in the cold ends of our fingers and tips of our noses. The sky wears itself out with its raining and the sense of relief at cups of tea or hot chocolates or simply indoorsness is incredible.

I trudged home from a salsa class side by companiable side with a friend as the darkness set in and we talked about surprises. I now sit here in our cosy library, the sound of jazz in my ears and the slow spread of warmth drying the wet bottoms of my trousers and that chill down my neck. I am skipping a lecture on Iranian Security - because the Beckita of this year is trying to make choices based on pure desire and not on obligations or some sense of lost opporuntities.

Days here run away with themselves - morning coffees after the one tutorial a week, animated discussions about friends dissertations on Cosmopolitan Education or the Chinese media, anthropological films and fair trade chocolate, bottles of wine and until a few days ago sitting outside our house in the almsot too cold wrapped in blankets and watching the stars, drinking earl grey from a teapot and talking over feminism in my crowded bedroom, attending auctions to buy useless body parts or the two sewing machines that are the main cause for the crowdedness of my room, or practicing horribly awkward plays in funny accents, or having a go at being blind just to see what it's like.

Somewhere in between is the struggle to stay motivated for work; the fact that I still seem to have to stay up til 2 in the morning to finish reading for the tutorial I had first thing today, or that once I leave this computer I will have to figure out a way of cramming the lines from act 1 of the Tempest into my head before tomorrow morning's rehearsal and figuring out exactly what my dissertation's on soon after that doesn't bode well for my abiltiy to stay motivated. Somehow though there seem always to be minutes for the absurd and the beautiful - and as much as I can rant about the apathy and the distance from reality of this place - I can equally write pages on its downright luxurious delightfulness. Never in the whole rest of my life will I have the time that I have now for breathing deeply on clifftops and falling about in giggles in my hallway.